Innovation is key to business sustainability, and talented young people are the valued commodities inciting innovation. In a competitive race to secure talent, employers find they struggle to source creative fuel for their business through virtual recruitment methods. In desperation to recruit, employers will find benefit in knowing the best practices and tips to find and hire remotely the best young talent.
Why Talented Young People are so Valued
Young talents promote fresh perspective and creativity. You can find the younger generation are more in tune with shifts in culture and they tap into this to inform their creativity. Recruiting the best young talent is a big benefit in staying current in the market, and another perk is that their skills in digital literacy tend to be high. A shortage of digital literacy skills over the coming decade makes talented young people stand out to employers, with their tech-savvy abilities. Being digital natives and exposed to online etiquette and systems early in their careers, young talent is also more adept with skills using tools such as Zoom, slack and other common office tools nowadays, making them the more attractive choice for employers looking to hire.
The Challenges behind Remote Recruitment
A virtual recruitment process can be difficult for employers to gauge a candidate’s skills and how they work. Time is also money, and when met with a pool of candidates it is difficult for an employer to use time efficiently to distinguish the ideal candidate. Young talent can also be more anxious or nervous about starting a role than more mature talent. This stage of anxiety by young recruits usually makes way for more favourable excitement which can be very powerful. However, with less ability to support and help onboard them due to the remoteness, it is more difficult to assure the new person can adapt to the position and is familiar with how everyone and everything works.
Some Tips to Recruiting Young Talent Remotely
Be Upfront About Your Business
Always strive to be open and transparent and let your values shine through, especially when recruiting young talent. If you do so, you can save time by being sure to attract the right candidate who is a perfect match for your company. Young people will engage more if they feel like they will belong or fit in with your culture, so it is best to establish your values to the talent pool before posting opportunities. It is also important to note that young talent from Gen Z are attracted to authentic businesses with strong moral compasses. If you do any sort of giving back work, look after the environment, sustainability etc. these are all causes the rising generation care about and want to support in their work too. Strive to stress qualities that appeal to them.
Embrace Social Recruiting
When recruiting it can be beneficial to utilise social media platforms that amplify your talent searches and generate interest. Social media channels can increase the visibility of your brand, particularly to younger audiences who commonly interact with them on a daily basis. The main drive of social media as a tool is in delivering valuable information about your company and culture to entice your young audience’s interest. While social media means some good exposure to creative talent of your young demographic, the platforms can also be a useful tool for employers as a way to research talent and network with potential candidates. Social recruiting can significantly lessen the amount of time it may take to undergo the hiring process by bringing interested parties directly to the table, cutting out wasted time and enabling your business to move faster.
Partner With Universities
Universities can also be a suitable means of engaging young talent. This is because a large majority of Uni students are recent high school leavers and are a part of the younger demographic. To initiate campus recruiting is an effective way to implicitly communicate to young talent that you are searching for them, promoting internships and entry-level positions that enthuse their interaction. These placements can be as motivational as they are mutually beneficial to both parties: providing valuable work experience for the talent, and injecting some highly sought innovation into the business. Issues can arise, however, when it comes to engaging in partnerships with tertiary institutions with the purpose of recruiting young talent. For one, it can be laborious to establish and maintain relationships with universities and they can ask for quite a bit in return, including constant feedback or the taxing task of hosting multiple students at one time. For another, the constant call for talent may mean you need to recruit multiple universities to be able to get access to the talent pool you need, which can suck up time and create more unnecessary work for your business.
Take Advantage of Special Platforms Catering To Talent
We all know about popular platforms used by recruiters to source talent, including LinkedIn and Seek. As much as they get the job done, the standard recruitment process is flawed in the restrictions it poses to the employer around considering the potential of young talent. With special talent-platforms such as Experlio, employers are given a chance of gaining the proof and reassurance they need to make an informed decision about recruiting talented young people. Only when met with clear examples of candidate skill put to real-life scenarios, does an employer get an authentic taste of their potential ability when it comes to future business challenges.
Young Talent Recruitment: Where to Go From Here
The younger generations thrive on virtual recruiting as it ‘equals the playing field’ by bringing the employer into the digital sphere where youth feel most comfortable. Simply put, if employers want to source the best young talents, they have to go where the talent is. Young people flock to where they feel most inspired, secure and valued, and there is no better location for that than on emerging talent platforms.
Progressive platforms, like Experlio, nurture creatives into developing important skills and exhibiting their potential to employers in a place of zero judgment, an attractive quality that makes them regular haunts for young talent. Great news for employers is that these systems are entirely online, remote, and provide online assessments in the form of challenges that verify the creative skills and thinking of talent on the platform. A diverse range of young talent is engaged and the platform’s strategy provides more cohesion for employers surrounding hiring decisions, all perks combine to make the overall recruitment process more efficient and most effective.
